I'm pretty sure the key changes if the tune has been pitched up or down by around 6% or more (not 100% on that)...press wrote:theres a few things that i dont understand about it i guess, first and foremost is lets say your mixing a 142 tune with a 138 tune how much would the pitch then effect the key, im guessing they will still be close and probably still sound better together than two whos keys blatantly clash, ive never done the math or the mixing to figure it all out but it seems it would be a factor.
I've started paying more attention to this in the past 6 months, more so with recording mixes than when playing out. It's pretty much essential when it comes to styles like Trance/Prog/some Techno, but House is a pretty lenient style as about 95% of tunes are all made in a minor key I find, so you don't generally get too many key clashes purely for that reason.
It's definitely not something that anyone should frown at other DJs for using, rather than doing it by ear. That's just older people or 'purists' who want to batter on about everything being done the way they do it, as if it's some kind of right of passage that everyone should train their ear to the harmonics of their entire collection.
No one has the patience or time these days to be even thinking about that.
KEYFINDER I've found is the best program for all this (Mixed In Key is expensive and not as accurate). You can customise Keyfinder so it'll mark up the key of a particular tune in the Comments tag in iTunes, so then it'll come up in Traktor or Serato or what not. OR alternatively you can ask the program (during a batch analysis) to add the Key to the end of the file name, so you'll be able to see the key come up on CDs and/or a pen drive/hard drive on the higher end Pioneers.
Harmonic Mixing is just another aspect or skill for DJing. Like advanced EQing, like juggling, like scratching, like fucking beat-matching... Listen to sets by people like Joris Voorn or Agoria or Raresh and you'll find that mixing in key is pretty common place, and after a while you'll be doing it so often that you'll be training your ear (by accident) to pick up these changes.
PLUS, it's all going to help if you're also producing and you're working on your scales.
Hope my input has been helpful. I'm by no means an expert and I've only been working on it since last summer, but I've seen the advantages of it first hand, and it's a really powerful way to help you stick out from the rest.